Neil Young - On the Beach
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Free Music Notes for On the Beach
Free Music Review: More than a recording, This is a STATEMENT by a true genius!
Hit: 5 Stars
This album is NY's Plastic Ono Band or Blood on the Tracks, and only an artist of such great skill could even make such an honest and poignant statement. First of all, he's telling almost everybody to **** off, critics especially, and that he's come out of his despair and uses his sense of wicked satire, haunting imagery and any other means at his disposal to get his point his across. Walk on is a straight forward rocker telling people who are doggin' him to get on with their petty lives. ...oh baby that's hard to change, I can't tell them how to feel, some get stoned, some get strange, sooner or later it all gets real...Walk on, walk on. It's a very confident, self assured, well crafted tune.
See the Sky About to Rain is a lovely mellontronic melody in which he deftly strikes out at Lynyrd Skynyrd and the South...some are bound to happiness, some are bound to glory, some are bound to live with less, WHO CAN TELL YOUR STORY? Basically saying, Southern Man was right on and there really isn't anything cool about Sweet Home Alabama. Quite moving and well stated; nice uppercut Neil.
Revolution Blues is so bitterly satirical and played with
sheer guts that it would be easy to miss that he's telling all the Laurel Canyon, eclectic effete, that he despises their back stabbing sniping so much that he'd like someone like Charles Manson to just wipe those "leper's" off the face of the earth, and of course Neil is hardly an advocate of violence, so don't take what he says verbatim.
For the Turnstiles is probably the most beautiful and haunting melody he's ever written, and only Don't Let it Bring You Down off Goldrush in even its class. Played with a slide dobro accompanied by only a banjo it grabs the listener from the opening. This song and Walk On are on Decade, and a large number of people have already purchased that wonderful compilation, so I'll let the people listen to For the Turnstiles and Walk On to let them hear if they think those songs are the product of a disturbed and confused mind, or one that is razor sharp and well focused?
Vampire Blues is a bluesy romp ala Down by the River, but he's really taking a bite out of everybody who is so rosy in their own outlook of life, yet have been savagely attacking him during this difficult period caused by the loss of his good friend Danny Whitten and road manager Bruce Berry to tragic drug overdoses in a very short span of time, in which he really did go on a alcohol induced dark dirge on his Tonight's the Night LP after freakin' out audiences with his macabre, nihilistic Time Fades Away tour.
Side two opens with the sprawling and weary title track, this is the weakest cut on the album, and it is merely very good and not either outstanding or epic like all the other cuts on the album.
...the world is turning I hope it don't turn away, I need a crowd of people, but I can't face them day to day. This song is just an honest and stark statement about what he's been dealing with and how he has managed to cope with all of the garbage, virtually all alone, without any real help from anyone...Get
out of town, think I'll get out of town. No, not checking out, just getting out of LA and the shallow music scene.
Motion Pictures is a low key acoustic ballad describing a day in the life of NY's blue period. ...all those people think they got it made, but I wouldn't buy, sell, borrow, or trade, anything
that I have to be one of them, I'd rather start all over again. No this isn't about death, it's about rebirth.
Ambulance Blues is the masterpiece of this collage of pain, sorrow, anger, vitriolic satire, and self loathing, which he had been dealing with, and now a new and triumphantly re-energized Neil Young has emerged with a strong and positive outlook on life. He attacks his critics and every other person who worked him over, and couldn't wait to attack his flanks when he was down. No mercy, no pity and no prisoners. ...so all you critics sit alone, you're no better than me for what you've shown, with your stomach pump and hook and ladder dreams, we could get together for some scenes...this is Neil at his acerbic best. The classic line in this song is...you're all just pissin' in the wind, you don't know it but you are, and there ain't nothing like a friend, who can tell you you're just pissin' in the wind...This is what his good friend and long time manger Elliot Roberts told Neil when he was in his grief induced funk which got him to straighten up his act. Now Neil is saying the same thing to his critics, come on straighten up I'm telling you what a friend told me to escape the bitterness....I guess I'll call this sickness gone...That pretty well sums it all up. This isn't an album for or about the weak or pitiful, and it is brutally honest at times, but the humor, sardonicism, and wonderful way he weaves this tapestry together is about surviving and hope, not about death and despair. A number of people didn't get it at the time, namely sycophantic record producers and A&R "yes" men, and this is without a doubt the most important work by one of the biggest talents in the history of the genre of popular music. Thankfully, for whatever reason, this magnificent recording which was being held hostage, has now been released on CD, so people can finally hear how valuable it truly is. When you get your hands on a legitimate copy of this
magnificent and monumental achievement. I suggest you go back and listen really closely to it again, and if you still don't hear something you missed when you panned this tour de force, then perhaps you should be a spineless, tin-eared, record executive? Hopefully, you'll hear what some of us have heard for years, and many more people who would have loved to, if they only could have; well, FINALLY, MORE PEOPLE CAN! By the way, I saw Neil perform near the beginning of his 1998 solo, acoustic tour. I'd seen a list of the songs that he'd played at the previous intimate venues, and one of them was See the Sky About to Rain, however, I thought if he was going to FINALLY play something from On The Beach, then it should be AMBULANCE BLUES! People were shouting out what song of Neil's they wanted to hear, but from about 10 rows back I said in a clear and even tone, "AMBULANCE BLUES" a couple of times, and I could've sworn that he was looking for the person who said it? After I said, "AMBULANCE BLUES" between songs for the third time, Neil then said he was going to take a brief intermission. When he came back he played one tune, then he played AMBULANCE BLUES, and even though he hadn't played it for a VERY LONG TIME, he still was able to play the entire song virtually just as it is on this recording. After he was done he looked at me and said, "That's for you, Jack!" I replied, "gee, thanks Uncle Neil," and then we both chuckled. Actually, I think Neil needed to play it, even MORE than I wanted to hear it? After all, he'd kept that cathartic masterpiece ALL TO himself for FAR TOO LONG, and repression is just not a healthy thing. Yo Jack, I mean Neil, isn't that why you made this incredible recording in the first place? Genius can be so stupid sometimes! I rarely use the term Genius, but I'd say that Lennon, Dylan, and Neil Young probably are deserving of the term, and this is a remarkable portrait of a tortured genius, who is able to work out the pain by using his unique and unquestionable talent. HOW OFTEN CAN OTHERS GET A GLIMPSE OF THAT? It's WORTH looking into, again and again! (Originally submitted on 8/29/03, but like On The Beach, hopefully this review will FINALLY be available to the public.)
Free Music Review: The final part of Young's so-called 'Doom Trilogy'
Hit: 5 Stars
On the Beach is one of the two classic albums finally reissued on CD (the other being Gene Clark's No Other, also 1974)- which is a treat for those concerned they might wear out their vinyl original. On the Beach had become one of those legendary albums that you could only locate at record fairs etc- alongside such albums as Pacific Ocean Blue, Star Sailor & Time Fades Away (inexplicably still unavailable, while lesser NY albums like Hawks&Doves get reissued!) The triad of Young albums Time Fades Away (1973), Tonight's the Night (1973, issued 1975), & On the Beach (1974) are frequently labelled 'The Doom Trilogy'- an excellent edition of Uncut magazine in Sep1998 did the definitive feature on them (there was also rumoured to be another lost album, Homegrown- some tracks have surfaced from this on Decade & American Stars'n'Bars). Time Fades Away was pretty bleak stuff- notably on tracks like Yonder Stands the Sinner ("I guess you heard about the great pretender/I went to see him and he's not the same") & the chilling Last Dance (which makes Joy Division & Nirvana look lightweight!); Tonight's the Night was the real low ("old times were good times"). On the Beach is a little more transcendetal- Young & co attempting to move beyond the grim years that followed the much publicised deaths surrounding Young (Bruce Berry, Danny Whitten) The album's philosophy is found both in the copious dope reportedly consumed during its recording & Motion Pictures lyric "I know I'll get out somehow". It's all in the album's cover- Youn surrounded by flotsam, staring out from a beach at the horizon. On the Beach is one of those albums recorded following a chain of bleak events and joins such albums as Bowie's Station to Station, New Order's Power, Corruption & Lies and Screaming Trees'Dust, which are all similarly created. It's also one of the great stoned 70s albums, alongside 461 Ocean Boulevard, Fresh, Greetings from LA, No Other & Todd.
A variety of guest musicians surface- Tim Drummond, Ben Keith, what was left of Crazy Horse, Dave Crosby, Graham Nash & The Band's rhythm section, Rick Danko & Levon Helm. The star remains Rusty Kershaw, who offers wonderful fiddle on several tracks.
The two least interesting tracks are Motion Pictures (dedicated to Young's then paramour Carrie Snodgress) & Vampire Blues (which is a poor relative of LA- though does tie in with such Californian vampire notions as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I am Legend and Gram Parson's Sin City. Not to forget Bill Hicks' Arizona Bay- though I think that was from a Warren Zevon song!)- far from terrible, but just average. The rest is suitably classic...
See the Sky About to Rain is an older song, from around After the Goldrush- though here the arrangement is suitably sublime- the use of a warm sounding organ & steel guitar shows us just why Young is such an influence on alt-country (bands such as The Jayhawks & Wilco are detectable when listening to this song). Opening track Walk On sounds like a more wary Buffalo Sprinfield- the backing vocals reminiscent of Stills in BS; Young moves onwards "some get stoned, some get stranded..."
For the Turnstiles is a banjo-assisted protest song- though who Young is protesting to is open to suggestion; "all the great explorers are now in granite lakes...you can really learn a lot that way/It will change you in the middle of the day/Though your confidience may be shattered/It doesn't matter...in the stands, the whole crowd scatters/For the turnstiles..." Young is suitably enigmatic AND sinister (there's a great cover version by Grant Lee Buffalo also)
The darkest moment here remains Revolution Blues, which has Young singing about dark extrinsic events- notably Charles Manson and the SLA. The phantasmagoria reminds me of rap songs like Casualties of War and Straight Outta Compton- & also the novel The Day of the Locust. It's very hard to square this song with the same artist who would write the Dubya-simplistic Let's Roll! The title track is equally bleak- existential rockstar blues: "the world is turning, hope it don't turn away"; though I think The Walkabouts cover on Death Valley Days was a superior take!
The best is saved to last- young and Kershaw are Ambulance Blues- a song that isn't the blues and does owe some influence to Bert Jansch's Needle of Death. This is country-folk territory, though more Gates of Eden than Last Trip to Tulsa, the recurring character of Nixon would return (see also Ohio, Campaigner) with the telling line "I never knew a man who told so many lies/He had a different story for each set of eyes". Odd that Canadian Young wasn'r threatened with a Dixiechicks style fatwa for criticising the US president (& again, odd to square Young's pro-Clear Channel, Reagan & Dubya good/evil sentiments...) As with Revolution Blues, there is a reference to Patty Hearst- presenting us with the notion that On the Beach is part-history lesson, an album that very much tapped into its zeitgeist. The past is of no held ("back in the old smokey days") and Young notes that to a degree he's complicit with this darkness: "all you critics...with your stomach-pumps and your hook&ladder dreams/We could get together for some scenes!". Best of all is the darkly comic pay off "You're all just pissing in the wind/You might not know this, but you are/And there ain't nothin' like a friend, who can tell you/You're all just pissing in the wind"!
On the Beach remains one of Young's career highlights and more than warrants investgation at this budget price- I think it's one of his strongest albums alongside Everybody Knows...,Harvest, Time Fades Away, Zuma & Ragged Glory. Young has been a fairly mediocre artist since Rust Never Sleeps- but this album is from his creative peak & also ranks as one of the key albums of the 1970s...
Free Music Review: My personal favorite Neil release.
Hit: 5 Stars
[WARNING: Long review] Neil Young is a widely varying, sometimes frustratingly inconsistent artist. However, he was clearly at his peak in the late '60s and early '70s, putting out at least five studio albums that could be deemed classic: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After The Gold Rush, Tonight's The Night, On The Beach, and Zuma.
You may notice I didn't put Harvest in that list. While Harvest is certainly a good album, it's almost TOO accessible and tries too hard, in my opinion, to be commercially successful. It also suffers from the two London Symphony Orchestra tracks. Neil's best work often came when he didn't give a damn about what his audience or record label wanted, and so that puts Harvest out of the running for best in my book. After The Gold Rush was a great album, as was Everybody Knows.. and Zuma, but each album had one or two tracks that didn't feel up to par.
That leaves just two PERFECT Neil albums, both released in the dark period of the early Seventies after losing Bruce Berry and Danny Whitten (members of his backing band Crazy Horse) to drug abuse. Tonight's The Night is a dark, harrowing, bleak trip through a shattered hippie dream, an amazing album but nowhere near accessible, maybe a little TOO dark for some. 1974's On The Beach is more easily digestible and lighter, but still quite bleak and very personal. It has remained inexplicably out of print for almost 25 years, but thankfully Neil has brought it back with a remaster (now, if he would only release Time Fades Away to complete the "Doom Trilogy").
On The Beach ranges from moodily atmospheric (the title track) to quite upbeat (Walk On) but throughout Neil's mood is bitter and confessional. He tells off of his detractors (record labels, Harvest fans, press critics, Lynyrd Skynyrd) on the rocking, radio-friendly Walk On and gets pensive on the hushed, organ-driven See The Sky About To Rain (similar thematically to the title track of After The Gold Rush). Revolution Blues is a disturbing rocker with the infamous figure of Charles Manson supplying narrative, and is one of my favorite Neil songs. For The Turnstiles is a dark, lyrically enigmatic cut with Neil plucking away at a banjo. That concludes Side 1 of the original LP.
While Side 1 was great, Side 2 consists of the four best Neil songs possibly ever released (that's personal opinion, of course). Vampire Blues is a darkly funny number commenting on the oil industry, and is the only actual "blues" song on the album. The title track has a very haunting, somber feel to it as Neil sings about falling out of fame. Motion Pictures (For Carrie) is a very personal ballad about Neil's relationship with actress Carrie Snodgrass.
And finally, there is the grand epic Ambulance Blues, which is to Neil Young as Desolation Row is to Bob Dylan--the greatest song of their respective careers. Over 9 minutes, Young takes us on a lyrical trip through his psyche, delivering some truly inspired imagery while a fiddle fills the air between verses:
"Back in the old folky days
The air was magic when we played.
The riverboat was rockin'
in the rain
Midnight was the time
for the raid...
All along the Navajo Trail,
Burn-outs stub their toes
on garbage pails.
Waitresses are cryin'
in the rain
Will their boyfriends
pass this way again?
I guess I'll call it
sickness gone
It's hard to say
the meaning of this song.
An ambulance can only
go so fast
It's easy to get buried
in the past
When you try to make
a good thing last.
So all you critics sit alone
You're no better than me
for what you've shown.
With your stomach pump and
your hook and ladder dreams
We could get together
for some scenes.
I never knew a man
could tell so many lies
He had a different story
for every set of eyes.
How can he remember
who he's talkin' to?
'Cause I know it ain't me,
and I hope it isn't you.
Well, I'm up in T.O.
keepin' jive alive,
And out on the corner
it's half past five.
But the subways are empty
And so are the cafes.
Except for the Farmer's Market
And I still can hear him say:
You're all just pissin'
in the wind
You don't know it but you are.
And there ain't nothin'
like a friend
Who can tell you
you're just pissin'
in the wind.
I never knew a man
could tell so many lies
He had a different story
for every set of eyes
How can he remember
who he's talking to?
Cause I know it ain't me,
and hope it isn't you."
In one word, brilliant. GET THIS ALBUM. True Neil Young fans won't regret it.
Free Music Review: Rollin' Down The Track Again
Hit: 5 Stars
In the Amazon review of this album it's claimed that this was the first "studio recording" released after "Harvest" and the rejection of "Tonight's The Night", which is technically true but bypasses the great un-re-released live recording "Time Fades Away", released originally prior to "On The Beach". "Time Fades Away" and "Tonight's The Night" are really twins seperated at birth. Both are dark, ragged, mournful and drunken masterpieces. To turn in "Time Fades Away" after the Warner Brothers rejected "Tonight's The Night" must have been a shock to the execs there at the time as "Time..." is an even more forlorn and raqged record of where Neil Young was at than was "Tonight...". When Neil Young famously said he was headed "..to the ditch..." after the MOR "Harvest" he wasn't kidding.
That same review goes on to describe the album as "full of despair and little hope". But I disagree.
"On The Beach" is Neil trying to get the car out of the ditch, maybe not back onto the road but, at least, onto the shoulder. This is the third of the four great dark albums that he produced in the mid-seventies, "Zuma" being the last long bong hit before the mellowness of "Comes A Time". "Beach" offers hope where "Time" and "Tonight" are full-blown funeral dirges for the hippie dream run amuck and hanging from a needle's point. The hope is hard to find here, but it's there in almost every song if nothing more than having the strength to be defiant once again and give the finger to his critics(Walk On), or rejecting celebrity status (For The Turnstiles), or in realizing that sometimes you're just "...pissing in the wind" (Ambulance Blues). He revisits past lovers (Motion Pictures), comments on the oil crisis of the early seventies (Vampire Blues), and gives us a harrowing yet strangly beautiful view of the darker side of the hippie dream (Revolution Blues). Here is a man rejecting just about everything that stands between himself and the light at the end of the tunnel (On The Beach). The sky might be about to rain but this train is going to keep on rolling towards sunnier climes.
There's a lonliness that permeates this music. "Time" and "Tonight" were communal wakes. "Beach" is more a burial attended by one or a visit to the grave after the others have gone home. In burying the past along with the dead he seems to be better able to move on himself. With "Zuma" there is a completion in "Dangerbird" (...with the rain pounding on his back he recalls the moment that he cracked long ago in the museum with his friends, and like those memories the rain keeps pounding down and down and down and down) and "Barstool Blues" with it's Shakespearian reference to "...a man who died a thousand deaths", to what seems to be a complete recovery and a witness to a man with a very different attitude than the one we knew from "Harvest" backwards, with songs like "Drive Back" and "Stupid Girl". Only "Cortez" seems familiar and a little like "the old songs". He seems born again, bitten and twice shy, and not giving a f*** if you want to come along or not. It's inevitable and I, for one, admire the attitude.
"Beach" is a great record. All four of the albums, separately and together, constitute some of the best music in the rock'n'roll catalogue.
I wish those of you who've never heard "Time Fades Away" could hear it. Perhaps Mr. Young will include it in the next box set. I'm lucky enough to have it on vinyl.
Regards,
JS
Free Music Review: A masterpiece from America's greatest rock star...
Hit: 5 Stars
Neil Young never wanted to be a star -- he just wanted to be a musician. So when the business of fame started to intrude on his artistic life, Young simply would pull back and produce something that was surely going to chagrin the record companies and alienate "fans" that were looking for the next "Heart of Gold."Such is the case with "On the Beach." As mentioned by previous reviewers, this album was the third in a triology of dark albums that resulted from Young's disdain of the commercial success of "Harvest," his ongoing mercurial relationship with longtime girlfriend, actress Carrie Snodgrass and, of course, the drug-related deaths of fellow Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry.
While the result is not the glossy commercial endeavor that sends record company execs into joyous spasmatic convultions, it is none-the-less one of Young's most artistic triumphs. "On the Beach" is a raw, emotion-filled testimonial to where Neil Young was in the world at the time.
The CD kicks off with "Walk On" -- Young's answer to critics, fans and friends who thought he had clearly lost his mind with his two previously efforts: "Tonight's the Night" and "Time Fades Away."
"I hear some people been talking me down
Bring up my name - pass it round
They dont' remember the happy times
They do their thing, I do mine."
"Walk On" is an infectious, accessible tune that boogies unrepentedly, and could have easily been a big hit had not it been part of a largely darker album.
Probably the most outstanding track (and most controversial) on the record is "Revolution Blues" -- a rollicking rocker (with a trademark incendairy guitar solo) that was inspired by Young's encounter with a then-aspiring songwriter named Charlie Manson. Young wrote the song in the wake of the Tate/LaBianca murders -- and though it's not an historical account of the crime, the lyrical content has several chilling passages:
"It's so good to be here asleep on your lawn
Remember your guard dog, well I'm afraid that he's gone
It was such a drag to hear him whining all night long."
and ...
"I hear that Laurel Canyon is filled with famous stars
But I hate them worse than lepers,
and I kill them in their cars."
Is it any wonder David Crosby didn't want to play it on the next CSN&Y tour? As for me, I can't stop playing it. It's something no other rock star could pull off. Simply an amazing song.
Another quirky favorite of mine is "For the Turnsyles," where Neil picks haltingly away at the banjo while Ben Keith squeezes some odd banshee-like wails from the dobro. The singing is quintessential Neil -- high, mournful and lonesome.
"Ambulance Blues" is a hauntingly beautiful peace, epic in both length and emotion. "Vampire Blues" is an amusing look at the ethics of the oil industry ("I'm a vampire baby, sucking blood from the earth -- I'm a vampire baby, sell you twenty barrels worth...). It's kind of ironic that Young would write such a lyric when he has a well-known penchant for big Detroit gas guzzlers. But then again, Young never held himself up as a role model to anyone.
This is simply a dizzingly wonderful album that gets better and better with each subsequent play. Its release in CD format has been too long in coming and if you're a Neil Young fan, this is a must-have addition to your collection.